Wow! What a fabulous walk today. The weather was fantastic, so sunny! Dylan even ventured in to the ocean… The hike took us in to the wild hills, offering spectacular views across miles of rugged countryside, the first of the springtime flowers already sprouting up. Sandy tracks took us past isolated small holdings and beautiful country houses.

Believing every person has an inner animal they most resemble in form and spirit we set about deciding which animal Dylan was. The process is often a long one but after sometime we realised he was an anteater. Dylan could see we were right and even did a little research on his animal.(For the record I am a frog, or a squirrel, it depends who you ask, though friends that have known me longest will insist I’m a frog, and Jolien is a Labrador.)

The path took us to the coast, with stunning views of the rocky cliffs, shrouded in a magical hazy mist.

We made our way along the cliff top trails and back inland, through fields and forests, in to the small village of Bordeira for a small rest before walking the last 4 or 5 km in to Carrapateira.

It was a long but satisfying trek, a beautiful day, with lots offun along the way…

Finally in the village we sipped huge one euro wines as the sun set around us. A large dog had followed us through the town and waited patiently for our next move. He seemed to have decided we would be his new owners and as we hitched in the dark, 2 girls, 1 giant anteater, 2 large sticks and an even larger dog, we wondered who would stop. We tried to put some distance between ourselves and the canine but he would not have it! Eventually a car stopped. A surfer dude with a very small car and a very long surfboard jumped out. ‘I’m gonna try and get you in but that dog is pretty huge…’ We quickly insisted that we did not want to take the dog and the surfboard was rearranged to accommodate the three of us, resting on my head, and off we all went back to Aljezur, already decided that tomorrow we most definitely deserved a rest day!!!!